Why I Stopped Using Twitter — There's a lot of Twitter hype in the blogosphere today, and I've contributed plenty of my own Twitter hype in the past. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to offer some anti-hype, derived from my own experience using Twitter — an explanation of why I STOPPED using Twitter.

50 Top 10 Lists of 2007 — Top 10 Gadgets — #1. Apple iPhone — The iPhone changed the way we think about how mobile media devices should look, feel and perform. The design is exceptional inside and out: It's got a slick glass-and-stainless steel case and an elegant touch screen loaded with eye candy.

Penthouse Buys Group of Social-Networking Sites — While the influx of free and low-cost video has hurt the sale of pornographic videos, the chief executive of the Penthouse Media Group remains so bullish on the sex-related entertainment industry that he is investing $500 million in a group of social networking sites.

Mahalo takes a step forward with human-powered search engine — Jason McCabe Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, believes that humans can outwit the machines. This is not a replay of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" movies. Rather, Mahalo is a search engine that is powered by human judgment, known in Web 2.0 circles as "curation."

A new face in HTPCs — When we first opened the PDF containing the concept images of Omaura's concept TT chassis, we thought for a second it was a large, TV-stand-ready all-in-one PC whose display had a seriously distorted aspect ratio. We'll confess to a little disappointment once we realized …

Quote of the Day — "After debating this for the past few weeks, I've decided to make my entire flickr stream private. — My images are being stolen and used in ways that I am not comfortable with on an almost weekly basis, sometimes several times in a week.

The Next Social Network: WordPress — Could open-source blogging platform WordPress serve as your next social networking profile? Chris Messina, co-founder of Citizen Agency, thinks so. He's started a project called DiSo, for distributed social networking, that aims to "build a social network with its skin inside out."

FTC And Seven States Sue Payment Processor that Allegedly Took Millions from Consumers' Bank Accounts on Behalf of Fraudulent Telemarketers and Internet-based Merchants — The Federal Trade Commission and seven state attorneys general have charged a payment processor with violating federal …

"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary — BOSTON (Reuters) - "w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary. — Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said "w00t" — typically spelled with two zeros …

Interoperability is top open-source customer worry — San Francisco - The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit group backed by a number of commercial open-source vendors, released a survey on Wednesday that found interoperability is a foremost concern among open-source-software customers.